


hail, horrors, hail

by amosanguis



Series: baseball horrorthon 2k18 [6]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Angst, Brief Intense Violence, Chicago Cubs, Gen, Horror, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Linear Narrative, Zombie Apocalypse, some cubbies make it but most don't, title from a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:53:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16390685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: The plan was made over too many beers and too many episodes ofThe Walking Dead.





	hail, horrors, hail

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Song of Joy" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

-z-

 

The plan was made over too many beers and too many episodes of _The Walking Dead_ and it was all supposed to be a joke.

 

-

 

Anthony leans against the doorjamb of his recently acquired little house on the prairie, located just off of the Washita River, and sighs as he watches the Texas sunset. The horse he’d stolen a month ago to even get himself here paws at the ground outside, snorts – blowing up dust that catches in the last rays of the sun.

He waits.

 

-

 

“We’ll meet in the middle,” Anthony slurs happily, setting his phone down on the table and, using both index fingers, starting one at Las Vegas and the other at Fort Lauderdale and dragging them carefully along the highlighted rout on Google Maps until he fingers met at the center: Wichita Falls, Texas. He looks up at Kris, keeps grinning and says, “Baby, we’ll meet in Texas.”

Kris whoops and slaps the table and says, “Texas it is.”

 

-

 

Anthony never could get the weight of a gun to feel right in his hands, so he sticks to a weapon he knows best: a baseball bat (the one he’d gotten during Players Weekend 2018, the one with half-a-heart to match Kris’s own bat). Beating someone is dirtier, harder because there’s no distance – every kill is up close and personal – but it works for him, just as he’s sure it works for other ball players.

The last he’d heard from Kris, just before the cell towers quit, Kris was sticking to a bat, too, though his mama had been surprisingly efficient with the small revolver she’d kept under the mattress. There were some other things about that last conversation that sit sour in his stomach, but he tries not to think about them too much.

In the living room of the Texas house, David “Boat” Bote sits quietly, staring out the windows at nothing.

It’s something he does a lot these days.

Anthony leaves him to it, opting instead to ride into town and slowly clearing it of the dead, working his anxiety out of his body as best he can.

 

-

 

“Y’all are ridiculous,” Boat snorts, shaking his head and turning away from his two hungover teammates.

Kris shrugs and settles further into the seats of the bus. “Maybe,” he says, nudging his sunglasses a little further up onto his nose with his left hand since his whole right side was being pinned in place by a softly grumbling Anthony.

“If you don’t want to be included in our Super Awesome Zombie Contingency Plan,” Anthony says, “then fine, you can get eaten in the first wave. Kyle can have your spot.”

Schwarbs looks up from his phone and over to Anthony and Kris and Boat at the sound of his name. “Sounds cool,” he says before he looks back at his phone.

“Damn right,” Anthony says, snuggling deeper into Kris before falling asleep.

 

-

 

Anthony and Boat are soon joined by first Scwharber, then Heyward and Zobrist and Baez and Contreras. Some of them arrive with their families, some don’t. They move into what little space there is, but as their numbers grow, they take turns running into the town proper to gather, not just food supplies, but also tools.

Then they begin clearing away any neighboring trees and set to work building homes for each other. It makes for long and hard days, but it passes the time and keeps Anthony from staring westward for too long. The homes start as little shacks – just something to keep the weather out. But with some trial-and-error, and the salvaging of materials like insulation and wood from other houses, the shacks quickly become small cabins which become larger log cabins as the group hones their skills.

“Luckily for y’all,” Zo says, twirling a hammer, “I studied a lot of YouTube log cabin videos before the internet went out.”

Anthony snorts out a laugh as Javy flicks a bit of mud at him.

 

-

 

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Anthony says into his phone, trying to be as nonchalant as he could despite the slight panic welling in his chest as Wolf Blitzer rolls his eyes and tells him and millions of other Americans to stay calm, that this was all likely an elaborate Halloween prank.

Kris lets out a shaky breath. “I don’t know, Anthony. What if—”

“Hey,” Anthony cuts in gently, “remember: we got a plan. Just stick to the plan, okay?”

Kris huffs out a laugh, but says, “Yeah, sure. Okay.”

 

-

 

Anthony thinks that a year passes, but he’s not entirely sure. They gather horses and livestock from nearby properties; bookmarking which farms were producing which crops and making frequent trips.

J-Hey and Zo jump into the farming life, learning what they can from the books found at the Wichita Falls public library and whatever other documents they can find in the farm houses themselves.

A few more of the guys and their families show: Hendricks and Darvish and Lester and Happ; Morrow doesn’t make it, but his wife does – she’s thin and shaking and her clothes are covered in Brandon’s blood (she’s not the only partner to a player who shows up alone and Anthony never turns any of them away).

There was a close call where, having taken down all the trees from miles around, Anthony and the others watched a large tornado rumble along the horizon, miles and miles off – the tiger of the plains creeping along that dividing line between earth and sky. After that, they set about building a large underground shelter that could fit everyone and more.

 

-

 

“I’ve got my bat and mama’s got her gun and I don’t know where dad is. So, look, if I don’t get to see you before—”

“Shut up,” Anthony says, his throat clenching and his mouth dry even as his eyes fill with tears. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I love you, okay?” Kris says, _shouts_. “Fuck, I love you, and I need you to know that because this is the first time in three days that I’ve been able to reach you and I don’t know when that’ll happen again.”

And just as Kris is sucking in another breath to continue – the line goes dead.

“Kris? _Kris_ ,” Anthony screams in frustration.

Behind him, the front door opens, and his mama walks in, blood dripping from her nose as she whispers Anthony’s name.

(She would be his first kill.)

 

-

 

Another winter passes and the Chicago Cubs have effectively taken over Wichita Falls.

Their territory stays rid of the dead. Any other people who pass through that weren’t affiliated with the Cubs are quickly and brutally sent on their way – something Anthony sees to personally, taking out all his anger at this new world, all his fear of never seeing Kris again, on whoever was stupid enough to not heed his initial warnings.

(Anthony swings his bat one-handed, knocking the gun out of the other man’s grasp, and following it through with a fist. As soon as the guy’s on his back, Anthony brings a foot down onto his face once, twice, three times. Those with the intruder scream and beg for mercy, but Anthony’s long since scrubbed that word from his vocabulary. Mercy had no place in this new world.)

(Anthony gallops hard and fast at the group, riding atop the same mare who’d been with him all this time, twirling his bat in hand as they attempt to scatter. Those he doesn’t brain are trampled under hoof.)

(Anthony flicks blood from his Players Weekend bat, pointedly ignoring the dust storm looming on the horizon as he clambers back onto his horse and rides back to the Cubs’ settlement. Javy had suggested calling it New Chicago; Anthony thinks he likes the sound of that.)

J-Hey and Zo get crops planted and the first harvest is barely enough to feed them all, but, supplemented by canned goods, no one starves.

Some of the wives come together and make up a calendar based on their cycles. It gives them all some sense of time. Some sense of normalcy.

Anthony avoids the calendars at all costs – they reminded him too much of what he was waiting for (who he was waiting on), and it _hurts_ him in ways he can’t run from.

 

-

 

Anthony’s not sure how he makes it out of Florida, he just knows that Almora doesn’t. He’d had Al by the hand one minute – the next, he’d been dragged away, screaming and crying and there’d been nothing Anthony could do. He didn’t even have a gun to put Al out of his misery before they’d really started tearing into him.

The wet sound of bones being snapped and torn from the inside of someone never leaves Anthony, even when he sleeps.

(Later, when his face is covered with blood and his bat is dangling from his hand and there’s nothing but the fading echoes of a scream, a plea, Anthony thinks that maybe the sound isn’t so bad when it comes from the right source – this fight was ended and Anthony’s got another victory under his belt and New Chicago is a little bit safer.)

 

-

 

They’re in their third winter when a tall man on a tall horse crests a nearby ridge, silhouetted by the setting sun so all his features were in shadow.

 

-z-

 

End.

**Author's Note:**

> If I do another horrorthon next year, this will probably be the one that gets a second chapter.


End file.
